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Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. E : the story of a number Item Preview. The interest earned on a bank account, the arrangement of seeds in a sunflower, and the shape of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis are all intimately connected with the mysterious number e.
In this informal and engaging history, Eli Maor portrays the curious characters and the elegant mathematics that lie behind the number. Designed for a reader with only a modest mathematical background, this biography brings out the central importance of e to mathematics and illuminates a golden era in the age of science.
Maor has written an excellent book that should be in every public and school library. Unlike pi, which has been known for thousands of years, and which was foundational to geometry, one of Mathematics' oldest branches, e has been around for a shorter period of time about years , and deals with a bunch of things like irrationality, infinity and stuff that ancient mathematicians never liked to think much about.
I always find interesting the story of Hippasus , a Pythagorean who is famous for getting drowned by other Pythagoreans for his threat to expose irrationality. Although a lot of stuff in the book was over my head and I steadily refused the urge to read the Appendices, I still think this book is a good work of mathematical history.
Jul 05, Jeffrey rated it really liked it. OK, so books on math, not going to become national best sellers by any stretch of the imagination. But any story in the field of math be it zero, 'e,' Phi, PI tells us more about that mystical, insightful language that can tell us so much about the why's and what's of our surroundings, as well as provide the more practical to suit our human needs.
Math is interesting in the sense that it dictates to the mathematician not the mathematician to it to determine outcome. So, to the book. Maor has done a great job giving us some background on 'e' and its beginnings in logarithmic use. And even though 'e's use can be found in diverse places--"the interest earned in a bank account, the arrangement of seeds in a sunflower, and the shape of the Gateway Arch in St.
Louis"--its significance, only second to PI in importance, as a number is greatly and clearly expressed by Maor. It's written for the non-mathematician, no great depth of understanding needed to get the points here. Some anecdotes and diversions to bring home points made. Good effort. Nov 26, Ben Pace rated it it was ok Shelves: math-popular. Enjoyable skim through the basics of logarithms, conic sections, calculus, and various other areas of mathematics relating to e.
Not a textbook, so don't read this to learn those subjects, only to glance at them. The historical aspects add a narrative element, and of course the writing is far more pleasant than a textbook too.
The background given, and also the original explanations, helped me to understand some of the concepts better, so I am glad that I read it. I will only be giving it a curs Enjoyable skim through the basics of logarithms, conic sections, calculus, and various other areas of mathematics relating to e. I will only be giving it a cursory glance though. Subject to edit on completion Jan 18, Stanley Xue rated it really liked it Shelves: owned.
Great book to explore mathematics from a different perspective recreational rather than traditional mathematics education. Even suitable if you haven't touched and been learning more maths for a while. Many of the explanations were built from first principles. Although there was a lot of overlap initially with mathematics covered in high school cirricula e. Similarly to An Imaginary Tale, this subject matter was approached in a chronological manner, with stories about the characters and mathematicians involved in the story of e.
This improved the ease of the read and helped maintan my interest in combination with other general trivial facts and case studies e. There was ample new subject matter especially in the latter half of the book for me stuff that wasn't covered in high school, wasn't proven and accepted as fact, or just forgotten by me : spira mirabillis, squaring of the hyperbola proof for area under hyperbola without use of calculus , hyperbolic functions, mapping of complex functions etc.
It was especially satisfying to read about the relationship between e and pi e. Would recommend reading in conjunction with An Imaginary Tale a book about the imaginary number: i - although the material of the latter seems to be more advanced. Having only read that book a month ago, I seem to have forgotten some of the theorems and proofs within. As such, this book was great to remind me of those theorems and the beauty of their proofs.
NB: some overlap in the content of the book e. Euler's thoerem, Laplace's equations, hyperbolic functions. Maybe I wish that there was more maths in this book. Some proofs seem to be glossed over and "outside the scope of this book".
Some of the explanations seem less clear than those within An Imaginary Tale. Maybe this is why I rate this book 4 starts instead of 5. As well since the novelty of a book that is not a textbook fiddling with a lot of maths has been attenuated for me. Although I'm not sure which one I retain better since it seems that a lot of the proofs and examples in An Imaginary Tale have already been lost on me.
As said by others - picked this up wanting to understand a complex mathematical topic, got this and also an awesome historical overview of the development of the calculus and more over hundreds of years. I may not be a mathematician, but I always loved math in school, and I like reading about math and science I loved Infinite Powers, for example , so I was excited to read this book.
Maor states in the prologue that his goal is "to tell the story of e on a level accessible to readers with only a modest background in mathematics" and promises to minimize the use of mathematical formulas in the text. Given that, I anticipated this book would be similar to Strogatz's in approach, and would be a fas I may not be a mathematician, but I always loved math in school, and I like reading about math and science I loved Infinite Powers, for example , so I was excited to read this book.
Given that, I anticipated this book would be similar to Strogatz's in approach, and would be a fascinating look at the history of a number. I think, however, that Maor and I have a different definition of "modest background.
If I went verrrrry slowly and tried to pull out all of my old memories from my high school and college calculus classes, I could sort of follow him, but I certainly wouldn't call it accessible. I'm guessing that math majors and others in fields that use complex math on a daily basis would find the book interesting.
I just wasn't his target audience, no matter how he framed his intentions in the prologue. Shelves: science-nature. For one thing, this book has differential equations. A lot of them. What really helped get me through the book were the historical anecdotes, and the parts of the book I was able to follow well were also well-done.
Feb 25, Tim rated it really liked it. Maor's account of the place of e, the base of the natural logarithms, in the history of mathematics provides a peek inside a mathematician's brain. More connected by mathematical ideas than by chronology or the usual social, cultural, economic, or political themes taken up by historians, Maor's book opened vistas in the calculus I did not see when I first ploddingly confronted derivatives and integrals some decades ago.
He thoroughly covers the differing views of Newton and Leibniz as they devel Maor's account of the place of e, the base of the natural logarithms, in the history of mathematics provides a peek inside a mathematician's brain. He thoroughly covers the differing views of Newton and Leibniz as they developed the calculus. He discusses some of the special characteristics of e revealed in the fact that the exponential function is its own derivative.
He shows how e appeared in nature and the arts - musical scales, the spiral mirablis, a hanging chain, the parabolic arc of a projectile, the Gateway Arch. More than other of recent books focused on a particular number, Maor explores the mathematics of e with a mathematician's interest.
But metaphysics creeps in as it seems to in discursive accounts of mathematical developments and achievements. Numbers - in particular special numbers like e - have been imbued with mystical connections to larger or hidden things. This account of e raises the questions again, "What is this language of numbers that humans have developed and how is this language linked to the world 'out there'? Such numbers are called transcendental, meaning merely 'beyond algebraic'.
In the end, Maor's story of e is an account of human activity in a world of patterns. And it is an excellent companion to a course in calculus.
Feb 16, melydia rated it it was ok. Like its more famous cousin pi, e is an irrational number that shows up in unexpected places all over mathematics. It also has a much more recent history, not appearing on the scene until the 16th century. My favorite parts of this book were the historical anecdotes such as the competitive Bernoullis and the Nerwton-Leibniz cross-Channel calculus feud. Unfortunately, this math history text is much heavier on the math than the history, including detailed descriptions of limits, derivatives, integ Like its more famous cousin pi, e is an irrational number that shows up in unexpected places all over mathematics.
Unfortunately, this math history text is much heavier on the math than the history, including detailed descriptions of limits, derivatives, integrals, and imaginary numbers. In short, as much as I normally enjoy books about math and science, this particular one felt too much like a textbook. Recommended only for those folks with a very strong love for the calculus and related topics. Oct 26, Aakash Subhankar Bhowmick rated it it was amazing.
The book takes you through an amazing journey of time in which you will be fascinated and humbled by the efforts which mathematician have put in to develop mathematics as it is today. The book is perfect to arouse interest in mathematics in your children, and to make them realize that more than its regular textbook form, mathematics is fun, inspiring and beautiful.
Oct 21, Dan rated it did not like it Shelves: science-and-math , history. Maor did not do a good job at staying remotely on-topic. This would be better advertised as a history of calculus, as more time was devoted to that than to e. While the historical content of the book is certainly fascinating, it is not what I signed up for when I started reading.
Apr 12, Ari rated it did not like it Shelves: abandoned. I found this basically unreadable. It oscillated too quickly between "history" and "refresher of AP calculus" and lacked any real unifying themes. It felt very rambly. The author has a lot of facts more or less related to logarithms, or exponentials, or infinite series, and wants to share them all. Aug 06, Swhite rated it really liked it. This is a fairly straightforward book, doing essentially what it set out to do. Having read other books by other authors with a distinctly different tone, I found the author's opinions troubling.
For one, the author seemed to be somewhat dismissive of physics an This is a fairly straightforward book, doing essentially what it set out to do. For one, the author seemed to be somewhat dismissive of physics and other applied aspects of math. For example, the author says, in so many words, that Newton's syntax and approach were polluted by the real world applications to which it was applied, while Leibniz approached calculus with the eye of a true mathematician.
And the one thing the book really has trouble explaining is why Leibniz died somewhat in obscurity while Newton was given great honors. Both had equal numbers of defenders and detractors. Why were Germany and France not honoring Leibniz and giving him accolades? The answer is that the author left out critical pieces of information and let his bias for mathematics against applied sciences warp his view of the players.
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